fuji owner, lets talk now about gear and gear choices and costs.
for someone starting from scratch, looking at the internets and what is in and cool and light and great, its pretty easy to come to the conclusion that for bikepacking anyway, you will tend to need the smallest, lightest stuff--which translates into "expensive".
yes, stuff has gotten lighter over the years, but one can still shop around and NOT spend 600 bucks on a tent, 250 on a campmat and 500 on a sleeping bag. Im in Canada, and prices are always a fair more expensive than in the states, but what Im getting at, is that if one shops and informs themselves well about what is on the market, there are perfectly good tents, sleeping mats, etc etc out there that wont be as light as the lightest, but you'll probably spend a third of the lightest and brightest.
There are also lots of pannier choices out there, if you go that route, reasonably priced panniers that will work well, and reasonably priced racks that will work well also.
bottom line, now as in the past, there is always a balance of finding material that is of good value and will work, but wont cost an arm and a leg, and this helps a lot for someone starting out and trying to budget for setting oneself up for a trip--which also may be an activity that you wont want to do again, so reasonably priced stuff, or heck, even finding used stuff, is a great way for an introduction to it.
Same goes for bikes, all kinds of prices, yet you can have a fun experience on a lot of diff bikes, new, used, etc, but of course there are all kinds of bikes and some are not really suited to carrying stuff.
the time thing, well, as others pointed out, doing some short trips is a good start, and then one has to look at bigger picture stuff if you decide you really would like to do longer trips, and hopefully find ways with work to create time--but again, short trips at first is the best way to go, to see how you like it, and go from there.